14z

We did a thorough review of the base model Dell XPS 14z last week for the official announcement, and starting today the XPS 14z is available for ordering. At 0.9" thick, the 14z flirts with ultrabook sizes but comes equipped with a much larger 8-cell 58Wh battery and an optical drive. For those that want battery life and still need an optical drive, the added girth relative to ultrabooks is unlikely to matter much. We measured peak battery life of over seven hours, with over five hours of useable (e.g. web surfing) mobility and four hours of H.264 video playback.
For casual users, the $1000 base model should be sufficient. It comes equipped with a Core i5-2430M, 6GB RAM, a 500GB 7200RPM hard drive, and...